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Planked Shad, Finnoise
Procure half a fresh three-pound shad; wipe thoroughly and season all around with a light tablespoon salt and half teaspoon paprika. Carefully oil the surface of an oak plank sixteen inches long by seven wide with a tablespoon oil; place the half shad on top, skin side downward. Set in a rather slack oven to bake for twenty-five minutes. Remove and keep on a table. Prepare a potato puree as per potato Duchesse. Have a pastry bag with a dentilated tube at the bottom. Then drop the potatoes into the bag and carefully press down the puree all around the shad. Wipe and slice two good-sized red tomatoes and evenly arrange on top of the fish. Slice two sound green peppers and neatly place them over the tomatoes. Sprinkle half teaspoon salt over them and divide half ounce butter in very small bits over all. Place the plank in the oven and bake for twelve minutes, or until the potatoes have attained a nice brown colour. Remove, squeeze the juice of a lemon over all and send to the table.
A planked fish supper in the Delmonico manner: bake the fish on wood, pipe a border of duchesse potato around it, cap it with vegetables and return it to brown. Most of what needs translating is the oven, the plank and the fish itself.
- The plank matters mostUse untreated, food-safe oak at least three quarters of an inch thick, never plywood, treated lumber or anything varnished. Season a new plank by oiling it and heating it empty in a low oven; soaking it in water first, as barbecue planks are treated, keeps it from checking and scorching but also slows the browning of the potato border.
- "A rather slack oven"Slack is the coolest working range, roughly 300F. The second, browning stage will not colour the potatoes at that heat in twelve minutes, so raise the oven to about 425F for the return trip, or finish the top under the broiler for two or three minutes.
- Shad and its bonesAmerican shad is exceptionally bony, with floating intramuscular bones that no amount of cooking dissolves. Ask for a boned shad fillet or side; skin-side-down on the plank is right either way. A three-pound fish halved gives a side of a little over a pound, serving two, perhaps three with the potatoes.
- If you cannot get shadRuns are seasonal and several Atlantic states have closed their fisheries, so it is not a supermarket fish. A skin-on side of bluefish, mackerel, king salmon or arctic char of similar thickness planks the same way; adjust the first bake to about 10 minutes per inch of thickness at 300F, or until the centre reaches 130-135F.
- Potato DuchesseRiced floury potato beaten with butter and egg yolk, seasoned with salt and nutmeg, stiff enough to hold a piped shape. Allow about a pound and a half of potatoes for a border this size, and pipe it while warm; cold duchesse tears in the bag.
- "A dentilated tube"A toothed tube, that is, a large open star tip. The teeth are not decoration only: the ridges catch the heat and give the browned edges the recipe is asking for.
- The peppers"Sound green peppers" means unblemished sweet bell peppers, sliced into rings or strips. Raw pepper will still be firm after twelve minutes; if you want it soft, sweat the slices in butter first.
- ServingThe plank goes to the table as the platter, so set it on a board or trivet, and squeeze the lemon at the last moment. A hot plank will scorch a tablecloth.
Planking fish on a hardwood board is a North American technique, generally traced to Indigenous practice along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and taken up wholesale by nineteenth-century shore cookery; the shad plankings of the Potomac and Delaware, where fish were nailed to boards and propped before open fires, were spring institutions and remain so in a few Virginia towns. The shad run itself once defined the season: the fish crowd upriver to spawn in early spring, they are ferociously bony, and their roe was prized far above the flesh. What the restaurant kitchen added was the border of duchesse potato piped around the fish, which turns a riverbank cookout into a plated dish, and a garnish name. "Finnoise" is one of the French garnish labels used loosely in period restaurant cookery, and here seems to mean little more than a trim of peppers and tomato; it tells you less about Finland than about the fashion for hanging a nationality on every plate.